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Did I do anything of note that would make any of this information interesting to the public? I think I did not. If you want to put the work in and find all that

by arrrg 13y ago

Did I do anything of note that would make any of this information interesting to the public? I think I did not. If you want to put the work in and find all that out you are free to. I never once said that everyone should actually provide journalists with that information just like that. They still have to put the work in. Do that if you want to, but I don’t think you will find anything interesting.

polymatter 13y ago
If I understand your comment, you believe you are ok with sounds posting that list of sensitive private information, but only if he "put the work in" to find it. I guess thats the only reason you don't post all of that information publically yourself. Your information is clearly interesting to the public, look a member of the public specifically asked for it. How about if I compensate you, is that a reasonable substitute? How much would you charge in exchange for publishing every item on that list? I suspect you will find that there is some information that you'd rather not divulge on the open internet, where there is no shortage of crazies. Some of that info would be useful for identity fraud as well.
- arrrg 13y ago
  No, you didn’t understand me. A. You have to put in the work and actually find stuff out. That’s what journalists do. B. You have to report on something relevant and interesting to the public. Some random person who didn’t do anything of any note is not relevant. Publishing identifying information on them is unethical. Publishing identifying information on someone hugely influential is very much ethical.
  - howeyc 13y ago
    Who decides what is "anything of note" or who is considered "highly influential"
    - buttsex 13y ago
      Society? People have always wanted to know who Nakamoto was in real life and would consider creating Bitcoin something of note. Any news story about Bitcoin in the past couple years have included something about the mystique of Nakamoto.
    - mbillie1 13y ago
      The number of page hits the article gets? Come on - Bitcoin is news, and it's been made news by people like us. Don't be too surprised or appalled when the general media tries to latch on to the publicity train.
  - MSM 13y ago
    > Publishing identifying information on someone hugely influential is very much ethical. How can you even say that? It's easy to say that if (assumption) you haven't done anything "hugely influential", but I think the feeling would be different if this article was about you. It's plain disrespectful. The guy obviously wants to be left alone or he wouldn't have stopped emailing, stopped answering the phone or called police when the reporter showed up.
  - weavejester 13y ago
    So if someone does something of note, they give up their right to privacy, even if that could compromise their own safety?
    - mpyne 13y ago
      That's basically what keeps the paparazzi in business, yes. There's a reason the First Amendment rights were listed first, as well, which is the same reason the Guardian has been doing much of their Snowden coverage out of their New York office; press freedom is a big deal, even when that's inconvenient for you...
      - weavejester 13y ago
        Since we're talking ethics, rather than legality, do you believe it's ethically sound to post someone's personal details, and then make (possibly false) claims about them that may compromise their safety?
        mpyne 13y ago
        > Since we're talking ethics, rather than legality, do you believe it's ethically sound to post someone's personal details, and then make (possibly false) claims about them that may compromise their safety? I don't think it's ethically sound to post his address, license plate information, city, etc. Especially since it leads to crazy media car chases and other sorts of paparazzi-style insanity that I wouldn't wish on anyone, let alone a guy who just wants to be left alone. I'm also partial to arguments based on safety. It was one of the many reasons I was opposed to what Bradley Manning did, for instance. However the risk to those affected by Manning was much larger than the risk to Dorian, and in any event I can't remember many people on HN saying before not to post stories about rich people since the unwashed thugs might stick a shiv in them and rob them.
        weavejester 13y ago
        Thanks for your honest answer. I'm of the opinion that it's legal (first amendment, etc), but rather unethical, especially since the evidence isn't conclusive. Regarding safety, currency stored in banks tends to be less susceptible to theft via coercion. If someone breaks into a house, holds a person at gunpoint, and demands their bank details, they probably won't be able to successfully transfer a few million dollars out without triggering some internal check. On the other hand, you could easily do that with bitcoins, assuming that the private key hasn't been locked up in a vault, or the transaction secured with multiple keys. I still feel it's an unlikely scenario, but it seems that claiming someone has $400 million in untraceable digital currency is going to impact their safety more than claiming they have $400 million in a bank, or in shares.
  - droopybuns 13y ago
    I'm sorry, but the journalists I have met do not do A. They conceive of a narrative and find totems that can support their position. You are espousing ideals that are taught in school, but rarely achieved in the real world. That whole theme of unethical in B happens most of the time.
    - milesskorpen 13y ago
      ... but they clearly did A in this case. That's why we're having this conversation.
- Amezarak 13y ago
  Most of that information is already available on the open Internet, given someone's full name, which many people use (or don't go to great effort to hide) on the Internet. Given my full name, you can figure out, in about ten minutes, where I live, pictures of my house and my car (thanks, Google), the amount of property taxes I pay and the value of my house, my approximate net worth, my family, my academic history, partial work history, and many other details I would personally prefer the Internet to not know. All this is easily available on open public Internet sites. And that's me. I make a concerted effort to remain pseudonymous on the Internet. I don't have a Facebook. I think you'd be surprised what people can easily find out about you if they want to. What I do find interesting is the dichotomy between what I perceived to be the HN majority opinion in the story about license plate tracking and this story. In the former, it seemed to me that most people declared that privacy was basically dead and we should get over it; it was perfectly legitimate to collect public data regardless of whether the aggregation of that data led to information that many people would consider an invasion of privacy. Indeed, many commenters justified this point of view by saying that, essentially, data collection didn't really introduce any new problems, it just made it easier to get caught lying (e.g. having an affair) which is your fault since you shouldn't be doing it anyway. But here many people (perhaps it is entirely a different set of people) clearly feel that the opposite is true: individuals, even those who may be involved in very public projects, have a powerful right to privacy. Or is it just that we feel its OK for companies and individuals to buy and sell information but less OK for the media to publish the same information wholesale? If so, why? At least when the media publishes my information, I know what you know. If people are buying and selling my information, I don't know what they know about me, I don't know what they're doing with that information, I don't know if its accurate, and I don't know how that affects decisions that companies and governments make about me. I especially find the argument that we shouldn't publish the information about Satoshi because it puts him at risk interesting. I think most of us dismissed the same arguments when it came to informants identified in the Wikileaks documents. I don't buy the "seeking attention" argument: many celebrities and people in positions of power aren't seeking attention and fame - it's a side effect of the job, or something they have done. The case is no different for them than it is for Satoshi.
judk 13y ago
Well let's hope that everyone else in the world becomes as uninteresting and uncontroversial as you, so they enjoy the comfort of de facto privacy. So what if all human progress grinds to a halt?
john_b 13y ago
So a person loses their right to privacy when enough strangers take an interest in them? Nakamoto barely provided Newsweek with any information at all. The rest was obtained (possibly illegally?) by snatching his email from a website he had done business with. After that, she pretended to have an interest in trains to spark a conversation and get initial information. She then stalked him and interviewed his family.
- anigbrowl 13y ago
  You don't have a right to privacy. Perhaps you should, and I've argued in favor of a constitutional amendment to that effect, but in the meantime privacy is just a polite social fiction.
  - john_b 13y ago
    It's more than a polite social fiction. It's a moral requirement for many of the rights guaranteed by the US Constitution to have any meaning. E.g. try exercising your right to an attorney when the prosecution logs all your communications. Or try exercising your right of assembly to discussion union membership while your employer monitors the meeting. If Americans give up on privacy and decide it's not worth fighting for, they will eventually cede the rest of their rights as well. There are simply too many powerful interests with strong incentives to create a world without a right to privacy.
    - anigbrowl 13y ago
      And the legal scope of those situations is correspondingly narrow. I'm not against a right to privacy, which is why I said I'm in favor of a constitutional amendment to make it explicit. I'm saying that you don't have a comprehensive right to privacy now. Moral rights are what you want, legal rights are what you actually have. I don't thinkt eh right to privacy is entirely unilateral; if it were, journalism could not exist, and the Constitution also forbids the government from abridging the freedom of the press - which includes the freedom to inquire as well as to publish. I personally would narrow the scope of press freedom if I were drafting constitution 2.0, because I believe publishers often exploit the economic asymmetry between themselves and their subjects to the detriment of ordinary people in a manner that the framers of the constitution were unable to envision, but there you go.
saraid216 13y ago
> I think I did not. Neither did Nakamoto, if you read the article.

by arrrg 13y ago

polymatter 13y ago

If I understand your comment, you believe you are ok with sounds posting that list of sensitive private information, but only if he "put the work in" to find it. I guess thats the only reason you don't post all of that information publically yourself. Your information is clearly interesting to the public, look a member of the public specifically asked for it. How about if I compensate you, is that a reasonable substitute? How much would you charge in exchange for publishing every item on that list? I suspect you will find that there is some information that you'd rather not divulge on the open internet, where there is no shortage of crazies. Some of that info would be useful for identity fraud as well.

arrrg 13y ago
No, you didn’t understand me. A. You have to put in the work and actually find stuff out. That’s what journalists do. B. You have to report on something relevant and interesting to the public. Some random person who didn’t do anything of any note is not relevant. Publishing identifying information on them is unethical. Publishing identifying information on someone hugely influential is very much ethical.
- howeyc 13y ago
  Who decides what is "anything of note" or who is considered "highly influential"
  - buttsex 13y ago
    Society? People have always wanted to know who Nakamoto was in real life and would consider creating Bitcoin something of note. Any news story about Bitcoin in the past couple years have included something about the mystique of Nakamoto.
  - mbillie1 13y ago
    The number of page hits the article gets? Come on - Bitcoin is news, and it's been made news by people like us. Don't be too surprised or appalled when the general media tries to latch on to the publicity train.
- MSM 13y ago
  > Publishing identifying information on someone hugely influential is very much ethical. How can you even say that? It's easy to say that if (assumption) you haven't done anything "hugely influential", but I think the feeling would be different if this article was about you. It's plain disrespectful. The guy obviously wants to be left alone or he wouldn't have stopped emailing, stopped answering the phone or called police when the reporter showed up.
- weavejester 13y ago
  So if someone does something of note, they give up their right to privacy, even if that could compromise their own safety?
  - mpyne 13y ago
    That's basically what keeps the paparazzi in business, yes. There's a reason the First Amendment rights were listed first, as well, which is the same reason the Guardian has been doing much of their Snowden coverage out of their New York office; press freedom is a big deal, even when that's inconvenient for you...
    - weavejester 13y ago
      Since we're talking ethics, rather than legality, do you believe it's ethically sound to post someone's personal details, and then make (possibly false) claims about them that may compromise their safety?
      - mpyne 13y ago
        > Since we're talking ethics, rather than legality, do you believe it's ethically sound to post someone's personal details, and then make (possibly false) claims about them that may compromise their safety? I don't think it's ethically sound to post his address, license plate information, city, etc. Especially since it leads to crazy media car chases and other sorts of paparazzi-style insanity that I wouldn't wish on anyone, let alone a guy who just wants to be left alone. I'm also partial to arguments based on safety. It was one of the many reasons I was opposed to what Bradley Manning did, for instance. However the risk to those affected by Manning was much larger than the risk to Dorian, and in any event I can't remember many people on HN saying before not to post stories about rich people since the unwashed thugs might stick a shiv in them and rob them.
        weavejester 13y ago
        Thanks for your honest answer. I'm of the opinion that it's legal (first amendment, etc), but rather unethical, especially since the evidence isn't conclusive. Regarding safety, currency stored in banks tends to be less susceptible to theft via coercion. If someone breaks into a house, holds a person at gunpoint, and demands their bank details, they probably won't be able to successfully transfer a few million dollars out without triggering some internal check. On the other hand, you could easily do that with bitcoins, assuming that the private key hasn't been locked up in a vault, or the transaction secured with multiple keys. I still feel it's an unlikely scenario, but it seems that claiming someone has $400 million in untraceable digital currency is going to impact their safety more than claiming they have $400 million in a bank, or in shares.
- droopybuns 13y ago
  I'm sorry, but the journalists I have met do not do A. They conceive of a narrative and find totems that can support their position. You are espousing ideals that are taught in school, but rarely achieved in the real world. That whole theme of unethical in B happens most of the time.
  - milesskorpen 13y ago
    ... but they clearly did A in this case. That's why we're having this conversation.
Amezarak 13y ago
Most of that information is already available on the open Internet, given someone's full name, which many people use (or don't go to great effort to hide) on the Internet. Given my full name, you can figure out, in about ten minutes, where I live, pictures of my house and my car (thanks, Google), the amount of property taxes I pay and the value of my house, my approximate net worth, my family, my academic history, partial work history, and many other details I would personally prefer the Internet to not know. All this is easily available on open public Internet sites. And that's me. I make a concerted effort to remain pseudonymous on the Internet. I don't have a Facebook. I think you'd be surprised what people can easily find out about you if they want to. What I do find interesting is the dichotomy between what I perceived to be the HN majority opinion in the story about license plate tracking and this story. In the former, it seemed to me that most people declared that privacy was basically dead and we should get over it; it was perfectly legitimate to collect public data regardless of whether the aggregation of that data led to information that many people would consider an invasion of privacy. Indeed, many commenters justified this point of view by saying that, essentially, data collection didn't really introduce any new problems, it just made it easier to get caught lying (e.g. having an affair) which is your fault since you shouldn't be doing it anyway. But here many people (perhaps it is entirely a different set of people) clearly feel that the opposite is true: individuals, even those who may be involved in very public projects, have a powerful right to privacy. Or is it just that we feel its OK for companies and individuals to buy and sell information but less OK for the media to publish the same information wholesale? If so, why? At least when the media publishes my information, I know what you know. If people are buying and selling my information, I don't know what they know about me, I don't know what they're doing with that information, I don't know if its accurate, and I don't know how that affects decisions that companies and governments make about me. I especially find the argument that we shouldn't publish the information about Satoshi because it puts him at risk interesting. I think most of us dismissed the same arguments when it came to informants identified in the Wikileaks documents. I don't buy the "seeking attention" argument: many celebrities and people in positions of power aren't seeking attention and fame - it's a side effect of the job, or something they have done. The case is no different for them than it is for Satoshi.

judk 13y ago

Well let's hope that everyone else in the world becomes as uninteresting and uncontroversial as you, so they enjoy the comfort of de facto privacy. So what if all human progress grinds to a halt?

john_b 13y ago

So a person loses their right to privacy when enough strangers take an interest in them? Nakamoto barely provided Newsweek with any information at all. The rest was obtained (possibly illegally?) by snatching his email from a website he had done business with. After that, she pretended to have an interest in trains to spark a conversation and get initial information. She then stalked him and interviewed his family.

anigbrowl 13y ago
You don't have a right to privacy. Perhaps you should, and I've argued in favor of a constitutional amendment to that effect, but in the meantime privacy is just a polite social fiction.
- john_b 13y ago
  It's more than a polite social fiction. It's a moral requirement for many of the rights guaranteed by the US Constitution to have any meaning. E.g. try exercising your right to an attorney when the prosecution logs all your communications. Or try exercising your right of assembly to discussion union membership while your employer monitors the meeting. If Americans give up on privacy and decide it's not worth fighting for, they will eventually cede the rest of their rights as well. There are simply too many powerful interests with strong incentives to create a world without a right to privacy.
  - anigbrowl 13y ago
    And the legal scope of those situations is correspondingly narrow. I'm not against a right to privacy, which is why I said I'm in favor of a constitutional amendment to make it explicit. I'm saying that you don't have a comprehensive right to privacy now. Moral rights are what you want, legal rights are what you actually have. I don't thinkt eh right to privacy is entirely unilateral; if it were, journalism could not exist, and the Constitution also forbids the government from abridging the freedom of the press - which includes the freedom to inquire as well as to publish. I personally would narrow the scope of press freedom if I were drafting constitution 2.0, because I believe publishers often exploit the economic asymmetry between themselves and their subjects to the detriment of ordinary people in a manner that the framers of the constitution were unable to envision, but there you go.

saraid216 13y ago

> I think I did not. Neither did Nakamoto, if you read the article.